Volkswagen ID.EVERY1 review: a small EV with a huge task

This small car carries an enormous responsibility. Volkswagen’s production version, due from 2027, is intended to reinvent the company from the ground up. For ordinary buyers, it is simply an intelligent, affordable £18,000 car. For Volkswagen, it represents something far greater: salvation. The firm’s electric-car journey has been marked by highs and lows, and the setbacks have been severe and largely of its own making.

The tale starts with the 2015 Dieselgate revelations. Volkswagen had already begun planning dedicated electric vehicles, although the first visible sign arrived with the ID concept in autumn 2016. Since producing the original Golf, VW had regarded itself - notwithstanding its troubling Nazi-era origins - as a positive force: a major employer building dependable people’s cars and supporting the economy. The diesel scandal exposed a darker character, and the company wanted to reclaim the moral high ground. ID cars were intended to provide that route, so their development was accelerated.

It was accelerated too much. Software difficulties meant the cars arrived late and incomplete. Germany’s biggest businesses excel in cars, finance and utilities, but the country has not created a truly major software or data company. I suspect that is connected to another unpleasant chapter in its history. Following the post-war division, the communist party’s pervasive Stasi intelligence system depended on hundreds of thousands of civilian informers. Neighbours watched neighbours.

Photography: Wilson Hennessy

Since reunification, a profound cultural commitment to privacy has endured. Start any German car and its display stays dark until you have pressed a data-sharing consent button. Consequently, when Volkswagen set out in 2015 to develop a range of connected EVs, it could not source the software expertise it required.

Volkswagen’s software problem and electric-car reset

What is more, the ID range was engineered using the conventional industry approach, much as a Golf would be. Volkswagen defines the overall requirements, then ‘tier 1’ suppliers assume responsibility for individual systems: Bosch for engine management, Continental for braking, ZF for chassis work, Magna for one component and Valeo for another. In many respects, the manufacturer itself acts as an integrator and assembler.

A connected EV, however, is shaped by software. Every system must operate through a shared operating system created by one engineering team: battery management, motor control, power delivery and regeneration, together with built-in connected navigation that plans charging stops. Early ID cars were a patchwork rather than a woven whole - and the patches began to unravel.

The early ID cars were a patchwork, not a weave. And the patches came unpicked

Since then, the Volkswagen Group has repeatedly established new software teams and divisions, only to dismantle or ‘reorient’ them. It now partners with XPeng on software for cars sold in China, while its recent multibillion-pound investment in Rivian will provide software for future VWs elsewhere in the world.

To be fair, Volkswagen’s own system has become more dependable and more capable. The screen freezes experienced by Top Gear in almost every VW Group vehicle - EVs and ICE cars alike - between roughly 2020 and 2023 have now mostly disappeared, while ID cars already on the road have received updates. Silke Bagschik, head of the ID range, told me that after the update programme had been deployed, the team believed its customer fault-reporting system had failed. That was because no faults were being reported.

There is a wider issue, too. The Volkswagen brand is an enormous operation that earns very little money - a two per cent margin - while facing escalating future costs and fierce Chinese competition. Difficult talks with unions have produced agreements to close production lines and two smaller German factories, reduce the German workforce by 35,000 by 2030, forgo pay rises for five years, and target annual medium-term savings of £3.4 billion.

Some difficulties stemmed from Volkswagen’s lack of agility, while others have affected the entire industry. Even so, Bagschik accepts that VW in Europe still cannot match Chinese costs. “We need lower prices on energy and raw materials,” she says, also calling for a level playing field - probably shorthand for tariffs.

ID.EVERY1: Volkswagen’s bid for redemption

Against that backdrop, Volkswagen cars need to be desirable if people are to buy them. Was the ID.3 desirable? Its facelift improved matters, but the launch model looked like a space-age pod designed for virtue-signalling early EV buyers, with an interior that resembled an unpadded cell and unreliable infotainment.

This is therefore about redemption: for Dieselgate, poor software, a costly manufacturing base that results in costly cars, and styling that has sadly lacked the reassuring solidity and friendliness expected of a Volkswagen. The ID.1 has a considerable burden - or several burdens - to carry.

I call it the ID.1, although Volkswagen refers to this concept as the ID.EVERY1. By the time production begins, it could instead be named ID.UP!, inheriting both the role and spirit of the Up. Likewise, the current ID.2all concept may become the ID.Polo when it reaches showrooms next year. Its name could change, but the ID.EVERY1’s form will not. The overall shape, proportions and clean design - once windscreen wipers and conventional door handles have been fitted - will remain. VW design chief Andy Mindt is unequivocal: “Everything we show now is the exterior.”

Like the Up, it cleverly looks unmistakably Volkswagen while appearing simpler and more cheerful than the larger models. Mindt describes the little golden block as “a completely friendly car. The face is really human with human eyes". He notes that the eyes - its headlamps - have deeply illuminated borders, ensuring that the bulb appears central within the lamp as you walk around the car. “Like the Mona Lisa, it’s always watching you. It’s a bit spooky.”

A black panel sits between the lamps. Mindt did not want a featureless strip finished in body colour. “This is friendly, not super cool, not about killing zombies.” Elsewhere, though, black plastic has been eliminated. “There’s no decoration on it, no additional parts. No light bar. No cladding on the doors or sills, no matte black. And this saves money, which we put it into other things like bigger wheels. It’s a self confident car, so you never feel underdressed.”

The car’s stance is excellent: inviting but monolithic. Its wheelarches are beautifully sculpted, and Mindt points out that they sit deeply over the wheels, visually drawing the wheels out from the body. Lower down, the doors are less pinched at the waist because that reduces aerodynamic drag. As a four-seater, it has a central roof channel that both cuts drag and stiffens the panel, removing the need for supporting structure. It is cheaper, lighter and better. The one-piece tailgate has also been simplified, with no covers for either the opening button or number-plate light because both are concealed beneath its lower edge.

It’s a self confident car, so you never feel underdressed

Its outline is a straightforward two-box design, yet it has an unexpectedly long, flat bonnet. Mindt says this gives the car a chunky, safe appearance, offering reassurance to parents buying small cars for inexperienced children who are learning to drive. Black-painted A-pillars visually stretch the cabin and underline forward motion. The upright windscreen also avoids putting a huge glassy oven at the front of the car, he observes with the manner of someone who was somewhere else - anywhere else - when the shovel-nosed ID.3 was created. The original ID cars were designed to proclaim a new era of propulsion. Mindt’s new ID cars are designed to declare that they are Volkswagens.

Cabin usability, range and low-cost engineering

The interior is equally uncomplicated. Production interiors often drift further from their concepts than exterior designs do, however, so it would be unwise to assume WYSIWYG. Mindt does reveal that entry-level versions are planned with an unfussy cabin, becoming more luxurious in upper trims or through accessories that can be fitted.

Beneath the central display sit a physical volume control and temperature buttons. Yes, Volkswagen is reversing course after fierce criticism of its screen-only interface. “Let’s say our usability concept so far was heavily criticised by customers.” The display will include permanent icons and a shallow menu structure. Cars of this size are also used as pool vehicles and rentals by drivers unfamiliar with them. Nobody wants to arrive on holiday and spend two hours prodding a screen before finding a way out of the airport car park.

Three principal groups require different cabin arrangements: young people buying their first car, older people acquiring their last, and shared-use drivers such as healthcare workers or delivery staff. It is patronising to presume small cars are only city cars or second vehicles. That explains the 155+ mile range target, alongside rapid charging.

The ID.Up, ID.Polo and a crossover, together with a Cupra and Skodas, will sit on a new front-wheel-drive platform. This creates additional rear space for a deep boot and a lockable compartment beneath the rear seat cushion, suitable for charging cables and perhaps a laptop. More significantly, front-wheel drive reduces cost by grouping the electronics and high-voltage wiring at one end.

These vehicles will share certain mechanical and electrical components with Volkswagen’s larger rear-motor EVs, although the ID.1’s 95bhp motor is new. So too is its 38kWh lithium iron phosphate battery: a cost-saving but durable chemistry packaged in a compact, lightweight cell-to-pack construction. It will be the first car to use Rivian-VW software. At the rear is a torsion-beam suspension setup rather than the pricier multi-link arrangement fitted to bigger cars.

Low production costs really are crucial here. Volkswagen wanted to build a small EV but was uncertain whether it could make a profit. It put 600 engineers in a room to search for savings, only approving the car once enough had been identified. Bagschik says that, for buyers, the smallest ID’s monthly cost - including lease payments and fuel - will equal that of a small petrol car.

Incidentally, she does not support an ICE ban. “There’s no need. People get hooked on EVs once they try them. No one wants to take anything if it’s mandatory.” We’d be Up for this one.